Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
SIX WEEKS BEFORE CHRISTMAS
SIMON
When I see Baz standing in front of me, looking all soft in his grey wool coat, I slam the door in his face.
But it's too late — the image of him with his cheeks red from the cold and a hand raised to ring the bell again is already printed in my brain, and putting a door between us will do nothing to chase it away.
Not even fifteen years of limited contact could do anything to erase the overbearing presence of Baz, all the little ways he has of seeping into your life and taking permanent residence in the hidden corners of your body, ready to resurface when you least expect it. A door has no chance against his ineluctable realness.
I rest my forehead on the cold surface of it, and I close my eyes. Which I immediately realise is a huge mistake, because it means I'm seeing the negative of Baz's shape projected on the back of my eyelids even more clearly.
Christ. Of all the people who could have visited me on a nice November Sunday, it had to be Basilton Grimm-Pitch. The one who got away.
I consider banging my head on the door a couple of times, but Baz is on the other side of it, and I'm no longer the boy I used to be, prone to accidents and constant embarrassment. I won't let him know that I don't have everything perfectly under control. (Though that ship might have already sailed when I almost shrieked in horror and slammed the door in his face one minute ago.)
The point is — I didn't invite him, and he's not the type to show up at someone's house uninvited and unannounced (I am the type, or at least I used to be), and I live here alone with my—
For fuck's sake. What did I do wrong this time? Which chapter of the Good Parent handbook did I miss?
“Yaz,” I yell, turning away from the door to cross my arms over my chest, and I'm not surprised when my daughter's head appears in the kitchen doorway as if they'd been waiting there the whole time. Eavesdropping. (Not that there were any eaves to be dropped. I opened the door and closed it without breathing a word.)
For a long moment they just stare at me with a puzzled curve in their eyebrow, probably waiting for me to explain why I'm standing in the hall still holding a gardening magazine and my reading glasses and looking as if I've just seen a ghost. (Which I have.) But then they seem to put two and two together — smart kid — and they lower their headphones to their neck, saving me from having to put into words the past two minutes of my ridiculous life.
“He's here,” they say, which partly explains what's going on while making it all the more confusing. Because why would my kid, who's seen Basilton Pitch maybe three times in their whole life, invite him to our house? Without telling me nonetheless.
“Why is he here?” I hiss, and they barely blink. They just keep staring at me, unimpressed, as if I were the one not making any sense. Fucking tweens.
“I'm not going to lose the contest,” she shrugs, pushing up her glasses and not dignifying me with any further explanation.
I'm well aware of what she's referring to — the infamous Crattelcammerham School annual baking contest, source of violent rivalries and unprincipled competitions fought with nails and teeth since the 1970s — but I don't understand what Baz has to do with it.
“But why—” I splutter again, and they sigh.
“Mum will be on her cruise,” they start counting on their fingers, “you can't cook to save your life…”
She's making less and less sense the more she speaks. I can feel a headache forming as my brain fights to leave my skull.
It's true that Pippa's weird honeymoon thing (I tried to understand the logistics of it, I swear, but the fact that she's invited to her girlfriend's honeymoon when she hasn't married said girlfriend and she's not even dating the other bride defies my comprehension abilities) comes at the worst possible time — Yaz and Pippa make a decent baking squad, and they even conquered a respectable fourth place last year — but there's no need to get Baz involved when we have plenty of other options.
“Gran Ruth can help you,” I say, and I don't care about how pathetic my voice sounds. “We don't need Baz.”
“We do, actually,” she replies. She taps something on her phone, maybe finally pausing the music (she only does it when she realises she can't escape the conversation in less than three minutes) and looks back at me. “When Stephen Lorelai-Kartridge's squad of grandmothers stole the trophy from Melanie McRippertoff last year, and with the precedent of Georgiana Willisburgham hiring professional bakers to win the title, the headmaster finally remembered that the contest was created as a bonding experience for students and their parents, and now only parents and their partners are allowed to compete.”
I squeeze the bridge of my nose, willing my brain to find some shred of sense in Yaz's words, but everything is drowning among those ridiculous names. I should've known what I was getting into, when I had a kid with the richest girl at my university, especially after I only got into that university thanks to my long-lost grandmother's old money, but even after thirteen years I'm not used to the poshness of it all. Before uni, posh only had one meaning to me, it came along with a six foot frame and endless legs crossing the football pitch towards my goal.
Now, posh is all over my daughter's school stories, and her mother's friends, and my grandmother's tea parties, and yet I still get lost when I hear these names that sound like they're popping out of some period drama. Even now that I have one of those too. Even now that my daughter’s last name is hyphenated, for fuck’s sake.
“But why him?” I repeat. There is too much to process, and I'm still hung up on the part of this whole thing that makes sense the least.
The hint of something finally lights up their bored face, and I hate that I've come to fear this mad glint in their eyes.
“Because he's good! Christ,” they sigh, dreamily, and here's another parenting failing to add to the list (whether I mean the swearing or the thinking positive feelings about Basilton Grimm-Pitch is up for debate), “he won GBBO when he was nineteen.”
Memories of that summer hit me like a sledgehammer. Baz's hair fanning out on the freshly cut grass of my grandmother's lawn. His tan hand running over my pale stomach, drawing circles and meaningless shapes to connect my moles. The night before that last day, his body fitting against mine like the piece of a puzzle that's almost perfect to complete one side of the picture, but somehow isn't the right one.
Watching the show from my shiny new room in Oxford, pretending to be surprised at what passed on the screen as if Baz hadn't told me all about it already. I sent him a text when he won, but he never replied.
“And he has seven bestselling cookbooks,” Yaz goes on, tearing me away from the melancholy of the past to throw me back into the absurd emergency of the present. “But you know it. You have a shrine dedicated to him in the kitchen.”
I frown. I don't have a shrine. I just happen to own all of his cookbooks, some even in multiple copies. (It's not my fault if Amazon messed up my order that one time.) (Or if I happened to enter a bookshop right after he announced on Instagram that he had left there a few signed copies of a book I already owned.)
“And you've known him forever,” Yaz adds. “So it will be easier for you to pretend you're going to marry him.”
“What?”
I can feel my entire body flush bright red and hot. What the actual fuck—
“Christ, Dad, are you even listening to me?” She rolls her eyes. “I said only parents and their partners can participate. Is Basil my father, perhaps?”
I shake my head, though sometimes it creeps me out how much she reminds me of the Baz I knew when we were teenagers. The more she grows up, the more I feel like he's raising her with me, and I want to set myself on fire.
“I thought so,” they smirk. I definitely want to drown myself in the ocean. “But the contest committee decided to be fake progressive, and they're letting the contender parent bring along someone who's not the student's other parent, as long as they're in a ‘serious and committed relationship’,” they air quote, contempt dripping from their voice, and I'm wondering once again if I should keep them away from Pippa and Agatha's rambles about queerness and feminism and whatever they mutter about every time they meet. (I shouldn't, I'm proud of Yaz for being a little revolutionary in progress.) “So, I told them I'd bring my father and his fiancé.”
I take it back. I'm not proud of her. I have the worst daughter anyone's ever had, and she's actively plotting my demise. A little chaos demon. Literal gremlin.
“I'm not— I don't— What—” I spit, my brain giving up on me and abandoning the battlefield. Yaz is trying her best not to laugh in my face, and I can't exactly blame her. Even though she betrayed me.
“I need to win this contest,” she shrugs. “Most of the parents suck at baking because they rely on their house staff too much, so I have an actual chance now that grandparents and hired professionals are out of the game.” I feel a but about to drop, and I'm not disappointed. “But Augustus Chapman-Coxwell's mother always makes the best gingerbread house, and she married a chef last spring. He'll have to step over my dead body before I let him win.”
Her gaze turns dark as she spits out the name of her arch-nemesis. She never really told me what the kid did to her, but I know his mother, and if the son is anything like her I should reward Yaz for not having kicked him in the bollocks yet.
“So, we need Baz. And he can't join our squad if you're not,” they gesture in the air, “serious about him and all that.”
As if anyone could ever be not serious about Baz.
“This is bullshit,” I say, and they giggle. Sometimes I remember they're still a twelve-year-old kid who laughs at swearwords. (Sometimes I remember I probably shouldn't swear in front of them.) “Only a falsely progressive school like yours could outprogress itself into exclusion this way — shit, I sound like your mother.” Another giggle. “But seriously, this is so insensitive to kids who don't have parents, or whose parents aren't available, and to parents who don't have conventional types of relationships—”
“Relax,” they laugh, as if they didn't point out the unfairness of it all way before my brain even started to register it.
As if I could relax when Baz is standing outside my door because my kid hired him to fake date me so they can win a baking contest.
Oh fuck.
Baz. Baz, out in the cold.
Baz, who's here because apparently he's considering helping out my daughter even though we haven't properly talked in fifteen years. (That time I drunkenly approached him at his cousin's wedding doesn't count.) (Nor does the time we spent an hour locked in a lift together at Agatha's first housewarming party.)
I can't believe I'm screwing this up so royally.
“Go away,” I sigh. “I don't want to see you until dinner.”
She winks, putting her headphones on again, and she walks towards the stairs.
“Oh,” she says when she reaches the first step, without turning to look at me. “I didn't tell them you're dating a man, so…”
Of fucking course they'll expect a woman. But I don't have time to deal with this little, insignificant problem when the biggest what if of my life is standing right outside this door, probably freezing to death.
I ignore Yaz giggling up the stairs, and I turn to face my doom.
BAZ
When Yasmin Salisbury-Stainton called me on a Wednesday night to talk business, this was definitely not what I imagined.
The house is fancier than I expected — late Victorian, three storeys of red brick and sash windows looking over an acre of well-maintained park — but it would be nicer if I were actually allowed inside.
I knew I should've worn something heavier, but somewhere deep inside me the sixteen-year-old boy who thought he could impress Simon Snow — he was still Snow back then, always Snow — by wearing designer clothes is still kicking, and this is the best coat I own. Mordelia says it compliments my skin tone, the cut is flattering, and maybe I just need to buy more coats. Heavier coats. A Simon Snow Salisbury Just Slammed His Door In Your Face And Now You're Wondering If You Should Freeze To Death Or Simply Leave kind of coat.
I eye my car parked at the end of the driveway, aching for the sweet blessing of the heating system, but I'm not going to let the lack of a warm welcome intimidate me. I've come all the way here for a reason, and I'm not going to give up on Snow again. (Or on his daughter, because apparently I have a soft spot for his spawn, too.)
But being left to turn into an icicle isn't the best start of what I was told is supposed to be a month-long collaboration, whatever twelve-year-old girls mean by that definition these days. (When Mordelia was twelve, it would've meant nothing good, and I'm not sure I should put any trust in the younger generations.)
I'm about to ring the bell again — if nothing, Snow ought to put me out of my misery, call off whatever his daughter is plotting (oh, how the tables have turned) — when the door opens abruptly, as if some kind of tropical tempest had thrown it off its hinges.
“Fuck,” Snow says, his hand already fighting with the short hair on the back of his head. He looks even more bewildered than when he first opened the door ten minutes ago, eyes huge and a frown wrinkling his forehead, but at least this time he keeps the door open. “Fuck,” he says again, which is unhelpful and the last word I need to hear from his mouth. He seems to be struggling with himself, which I could understand and tolerate if it didn't involve keeping me in the freezer, but before I can voice my annoyance he steps to one side and sighs. “Come on in.”
I follow him inside, past the small hall into a bigger reception room that opens into a huge kitchen. Modern, all black and white and sleek steel surfaces, it looks like the kind of kitchen that has never seen a proper meal being made. Of course Snow needs my professional expertise, if cooking is in any way involved. I would be surprised if he knows how to make tea without burning down the whole house.
“You can, uh, sit there,” he says, pointing to the stools on one side of the kitchen island. He hasn't spared me a glance since he invited me inside, and even now he keeps his back to me as he messes around with a kettle. (I guess we'll see how well he handles that.)
I sit, not really sure what to do with my body, or my words. I expected him to know I was coming, but clearly his offspring is not the little angel she seemed to be on the phone. I take off my glasses to wipe away the fog, and when I slip them back on Snow is finally looking at me, leaning against the counter and frowning as if he's still struggling to figure out why I'm sitting in his kitchen. (At this point, same.)
“So,” I say, trying to break the silence, and that supposedly innocuous word comes out as a treacherous little squeal. I clear my throat. “So,” I try again, and this time I sound mostly like myself. “You need my baking advice?”
I definitely didn't expect Snow to turn crimson, because I'm pretty sure that is not a normal reaction to have for something as innocent as baking advice. (Unless baking advice is what kids are calling it these days.) (I've been dating older men lately, I'm out of the loop.)
The nervous head scratching is back, and I'm starting to suspect there's something terribly wrong with my presence here today. “Do you mind if I take off my coat?” I ask, more to give him an out — no, I'm sorry, you need to leave my house immediately — than to ask for actual permission. (I'm a big boy.)
He shakes his head, and I don't miss the way his eyes linger on the part of my body that's not hidden by the furniture. He swallows — fuck the cold, I knew this shirt was the right choice — and I take my time to get my fill of him, too.
He's changed a lot since we were teenagers. I knew he was — I've followed his work with a totally normal amount of obsession, and we've met dozens of times over the years, at weddings and birthday parties and housewarming parties, even at a couple of funerals — but seeing him in his element, in the familiarity of his own house, even when he looks so out of his depth, makes my heart dance at a pace it had forgotten.
He's grown into himself, filling out the boyish forms I used to know as well as my own in a way that suits him so perfectly I can't believe he ever looked any different. I let myself study the stretch of his t-shirt over his broad chest, the curve of his belly leading the eye to a pair of thick thighs I'm trying so hard not to imagine naked.
(Not that I have to imagine it. I've seen the photos.)
I have to grab the edge of the island not to succumb to the thought of Simon's big body pressing me down on the mattress. His warm hands pinning my wrists over my head as he rolls his hips on mine, and—
Christ, Basilton, keep it together.
Just because I haven't had sex in five weeks, which is probably the longest I've gone without a cock in my arse since I started university, doesn't mean I need to mentally throw myself at him like a desperate slut. (Affectionate. I think slut should be a compliment — that lifestyle requires lots of skills and stamina. I know it.)
Especially since I'm here for business, not to seduce again the man who was all my firsts. I've moved on. Fifteen years will do that to you — turn a love you didn't think you could live without in a story you tell on a third date when you're reminiscing how young and stupid you were when you had your first relationship. Turn a body you believed would stay ingrained in your muscle memory forever into skin and curves you only know through the glossy pages of a fashion magazine. Turn the person who was your everything into someone you miss the way you miss being eight and feeling invincible. Into a little empty spot in your heart you never think about anymore.
But I can't help the way my soul still remembers the shape of his.
Time can heal all wounds, maybe, it can put into perspective the intensity of everything you feel when you're still finding yourself and feelings seem so big, inevitable, apocalyptic, but it can't take away what has been.
He was my first kiss, my first time, my first broken heart.
And now I'm sitting in his kitchen, and he looks more real than he's ever been. More solid. Sharper around the edges.
“I assume you weren't expecting me,” I say, because the silence is stretching out too much and I won't answer for my actions if I do something unspeakable in this kitchen.
He sighs, but his frown melts into exasperated fondness and the tension in his shoulders eases a little. Good. “Absolutely not,” he laughs, sheepishly. “Looks like I'm raising a plotting menace.”
I smirk at him, and his laugh grows bolder. He detaches himself from the safety of the counter and sits on a stool on the other side of the island. I can see his eyes better now, as blue as they used to be, even though the smile lines at the sides are new. I'm glad they are there. I'm glad he's happy. (The fucker doesn't seem to have any grey hair, of course.) (The bad luck is all mine.)
“What did Yaz tell you, exactly?” he asks, and even if the smile doesn't leave his face I can feel a hint of exasperation in his voice.
“She was quite lovely, to be honest,” I say. Because it's true, and because I feel the unshakeable need to side with her in this story. Even though her machinations resulted in Simon slamming a door in my face. “That you have a business proposal for me that requires my unique and invaluable set of skills.”
Now that I say it out loud, maybe it does sound suspicious. Why would a kid handle a business proposal between a model and a baker?
“And you believed her?” He raises both of his eyebrows, incredulous, and I have to admit this isn't looking good for my ability to interpret social interactions. (Not that I've ever mastered those abilities.)
“She was convincing.”
And I wouldn't have missed the chance to catch up with you, I think, but I don't say it. Simon looks relaxed, now, but I can't shake off the terror in his face when he saw me in front of his house. Maybe he's just being kind, and he can't wait for me to fuck off and disappear from his life forever. Things have always been awkward when we met, over the years. The side effect of going from everything to strangers in the span of two days, I guess. But this is different. This isn't us meeting because we have friends in common, this isn't neutral ground. It's Simon's house, because Simon's kid contacted me, and it's the most intimate situation we've been in since we were nineteen.
Simon doesn't say anything, but I need to understand what's going on now. Where we stand, mostly.
“So, was she lying?”
“No,” Simon sighs. “They weren't.” Uh. I file out the pronoun switch for future use. Near future, I suppose. “But it's more complicated than that.”
He gets up to check the kettle, and doesn't elaborate on his cryptic words as he puts two teabags in a couple of mugs and fills them with water. (Maybe he can make tea.)
He sets the mugs on the island between our seats, along with sugar cubes, milk, and a depressing packet of biscuits.
“There's a baking contest at their school,” he starts when he's settled on his stool again and the tea doesn't allow him to procrastinate anymore. “It's a pretty big deal for the kids, but this year Pippa won't be available, and I…” He trails off, but he doesn't have to explicitly admit how much his baking skills suck. I don't think anyone's ever used the oven in this kitchen.
This is unexpected, though. It looks like it's the kid who needs my help, not Simon, and it makes me wonder why she — they — didn't tell me so. They can't know of my Simon-related weakness — even I was starting to doubt I had any of it left. And it doesn't exactly explain why me. I'm barely a family friend. Surely they have a queue of relatives and friends ready to step in.
“So they want me to help them with the contest?”
“Yes. But that's not all,” Simon says, and the look on his face makes me wonder whether I should be worried about what he has to say. But he can't explain further, because stomping steps approach the kitchen, and two seconds later Simon's offspring is standing in front of me, glasses falling down her nose and a pair of headphones resting around her neck.
I've seen her a couple of times, but the most recent was probably seven years ago, give or take. She's quite tall, her father's blue eyes shining against her mother's dark olive skin. Most of her hair is buzzed, but the crop of dark curls on the top of her head reminds me painfully of Simon.
“Basil,” they say, serious, holding out their hand. I shake it, and they put much more strength in it than me, smirking. I'm definitely siding with the kid, though I'm starting to fear I might pay for it with my life.
“Yasmin,” I nod, and they frown.
“Call me Yaz.”
She climbs on a stool between us and steals her father's mug, dropping in it a concerning amount of sugar cubes.
“Did you tell him?” she asks Simon, and she seems to find her answer in his panicked eyes. “Good. I want to do it.” She turns towards me and spends the eternity of a minute looking me up and down with a calculating look. I'm pretty sure I pass the examination, because she grins. “Right. So. I need to win this contest.” The determination in her eyes is honestly frightening, and not dampened by the Winnie the Pooh jumper she's wearing. (If anything, it makes her more threatening.)
“That much is clear,” I smile, stirring the tea in my mug even though I didn't add anything to it.
“But Dad can barely make pasta without burning the pot, and Mum's on her girlfriend's honeymoon, and I can't let Augustus Chapman-Coxwell win.”
Chapman-Coxwell, Chapman-Coxwell… Christ. Neither can I. My father tried to set me up with his lovely mother when I was eighteen. I told her straight away that I wasn't interested — I was dating Simon, for God's sake — and she managed to fit three slurs, one of them completely out of context, in the sentence she used to underline just how much she wasn't interested. I wasn't surprised when she married the younger Chapman a year later — that man's personality is made up entirely of kind words for anyone who isn't a cis, straight, filthy rich white man.
“We agree on that,” I tell Yaz, and ignore Simon's confused frown. I admire his ability to stay out of the dirty gossip of our society, but now is not the time to explain.
“Great. So I need someone who knows what they're doing, but only parents and their partners can participate, so I couldn't ask—”
I stop listening to them, my brain trying to give a name to the dread that's chilling me down to my bones. Parents and their partners. Parents and their partners. Parents and their partners.
I catch Simon's eyes, and I finally understand.
“What?”
Yaz stops talking and blinks at me. “Which part isn't clear?”
“The part where only a parent and their partner can participate.”
“Oh,” Yaz says. They push up their glasses. I do the same. “Yeah. I told them I'd bring my father and his fiancé.”
I choke on the tea I'm not even drinking. On the idea of it. Fiancé. Me. Simon. Christ.
Simon is looking at me as if he expects me to go up in flames. I wish I could. I came here to get involved in some low pressure collaboration with Simon's modeling agency or something like that, and suddenly I have to pretend to date him — no, to be engaged to him — so we can take part in a fucking school baking contest.
At least Simon was just as clueless about this as I was.
We were both tricked.
Fake-parent trapped.
I shouldn't do this. It took me years to move on from Simon, and even now that I'm successfully free from any romantic thoughts I'm still desperately attracted to him. Finding him attractive is not something I can get out of my system, clearly. It's who I am when he is who he is.
I can't risk it.
But Yaz is looking at me as if I were her only hope, and I already know I can't deny her anything. I can't resist the half of her that's Simon, and the whole of her that's her. And I had to miss out on so many things during my childhood, because I didn't have a mother and all my father could do was stare into the void in his study until he met a woman who was able to shake him out of it. I'm not going to back out if it means helping her and her father have this.
I'm not going to back out if it means spending time with Simon. Maybe I no longer miss him like the air I breathe, but he's still Simon.
I can't say no to Simon — not when sometimes I still wonder whether the one time I did was the biggest mistake I've ever made.
And Augustus Chapman-Coxwell cannot win.
“Okay,” I say, smiling at Yaz and then looking straight into Simon's eyes. “Let's get married.”
Sun 13/11, 7:36 PM
[unknown number]:
this is simon
Me, unsent:
I know.